I always start out rhythms with the famous Wheatlands rhythm story. This silly story I made up my first year of teaching is a tradition at The Wheatlands... in fact, when 5th graders saw this on the board:
They were more excited than the first graders were!! If you have a first grader, ask them to tell you about these silly characters and their story, because it is something that sticks with them all the way to fifth grade. First graders were also working on learning about some very hard musical vocabulary: beats, measures, and bar lines.
He's waiting for his partner to tell him where he should place the symbol. Which beat and measure should it fit in?
Fifth graders are really working on being able to remember how many beats each of the symbols receives. That is probably the hardest thing for fifth grade because at his point they know 11 different symbols and have to be able to say how many beats each symbol gets, what its musical name is, and how to clap it! We played the game "Shut the Box" to help them practice the numbers of beats. They roll a pair of dice with symbols on it and have to add the symbols together to "shut out" certain numbers on their board. They had a blast!
These boys already started, deciding to add some different colors to their boards.
These ladies are just starting their game!
